


The Sweep of Easy Wind

by Cliophilyra



Series: 30 day OTP Challenge (Done in much more than 30 days) [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel's Trenchcoat, Introspection, M/M, Pining, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 13:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4608762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cliophilyra/pseuds/Cliophilyra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baby's broken down and Dean is facing a night in the snow. There's something in the trunk that could help him keep warm....</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sweep of Easy Wind

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt - Costume/Character Swop
> 
> (Formerly Infinite Blue - but I was never happy with that title)

The death rattle that comes from Baby when he turns the key in the ignition makes Dean's heart sink. "Shit!" He slams his hands on the wheel and drops his forehead against the leather with a groan.

He opens the door and shudders as he steps out into a frigid whirlwind of snowflakes. The snow is so thick that he can barely see a meter in front of his nose. The wind is swirling around him, pulling and pushing at the fabric of his jacket. He grabs at the edges and tries to pull it around himself as best he can as he walks to the hood and lifts it up.

He frowns into the engine as if the problem will be magically fixed by the power of his disapproval. The sad thing is that if it wasn't 2am and his view wasn't obscured by a blizzard and his fingers weren't turning blue, the problem would probably be immediately apparent. Now though, he pokes around dejectedly but he can't see anything obvious. His baby has just ground to a halt at the side of some desolate stretch of tarmac for no apparent reason.

Dean raises his hands to his lips, blowing warm breath against his numb fingers. Ok, fixing her is probably not going to happen tonight so it’s time for Plan B; don't freeze to death before morning.

He looks around. Thick icy flakes cling to his eyelashes, reappearing faster than he can brush them away, obscuring his view. As far as he can tell there is nothing but forest on either side of the road, stretching into a possible infinity. The trees are tall pines, looming close together. The huge pillows of snow that cling precariously to their branches only make the darkness between them look darker; it's not an inviting place to walk into alone. He's got a flashlight and a gun - or ten – in the trunk, but there's always a chance of getting turned around in unfamiliar woods and then you end up seriously fucked in a very short space of time. He's going to have to stay with the car, stay by the road. Who knows? There might even be another idiot driving along this glorified track tonight.

He slams down the hood and pulls out his phone in the faint hope that he might have some signal.

No Service

So much for that idea. Not that calling anyone is going to help anyway, Sam is miles away at Bobby's old house anyway, sorting through his effects.

Dean couldn't face it. Couldn't bring himself go through all those books, boxes, dusty artefacts and clothes, everything that made up a life, another life, that wouldn't have been over if it wasn't for him and his brother. 

So he’s here, driving his baby even though he knows he shouldn’t. Freezing to death on the road to what is probably a nothing case anyway, because he needs something familiar, to feel like there is at least one part of his life that isn’t crumbling away. He didn't want some nameless, unfamiliar stolen car, he wanted the only home he has.

He’s just going to have to wait until morning and hope either someone comes along who can give him a ride or that the problem becomes obvious, and fixable, in the daylight. If he dies here he will be really pissed.

He opens the trunk in search of something that might help him avoid hypothermia. There are a few old blankets on top of the false bottom and a half bottle of whiskey stuck in the corner. He opens it and takes a swig before he remembers that you’re not supposed to drink when you’re freezing. Crap. Oh well, too late now; in for a penny, in for a pound. He takes another mouthful. 

He drags out the blankets and bundles them up in his arms as he looks for anything else that might help. He grabs a flashlight and a suspiciously ancient bag of M&M’s; that’ll have to do.

He’s about to close the trunk when a trailing edge of beige fabric catches his eye. He bites his lip as he moves some more stuff aside, revealing the neatly folded trench coat in the corner. He reaches for it but doesn’t touch it, his hand hovers until he realises there is no one to see; literally no one for miles. So he lets his fingers trail softly over the edge of the lapel and then he picks it up, for the first time in months. He holds the messy square of folded fabric and runs a hand over it. 

The coat is still stained with black, it still smells of lake water; it was put away wet. He shakes it out and it billows in the wind like a sail, flapping around him. The wind swirls around and changes direction and the coat blows into him, enveloping him, and despite all the time it’s spent in the trunk, despite the mildew, the black Leviathan crap, it still smells like him.

It’s not a smell that could ever be associated with a human, like soap, laundry detergent, sweat, warmth. It smells not exactly like the ocean, but like the smell you only get when you stand on the edge of the sea and the wind is rushing towards you so fast and so powerfully that you can’t breathe and you worry for a moment that you might suffocate because there’s too much air.

That’s what it feels like when you love an angel. 

He puts the blankets and other stuff down for a moment and, without thinking too much, pushes his arms into the sleeves of the coat over his own jacket and, fighting against the wind again, pulls it around himself. The blizzard wraps it around his legs, pressing the loose fabric against the heavy denim. 

He picks up the rest of his supplies again, slams the trunk and gets into the back seat of the Impala. He pulls the doors closed and attempts to make himself as comfortable as possible. He lies along the bench seat, head propped against the door and wraps the edges of the coat around himself. It is awkward and huge, not something he would normally choose to wear. But it is quite warm and strangely comforting. He piles the blankets, which are scratchy and smell like dust and gasoline, on top of him, pulls the collar of the coat up and sighs. To say he was warm might be a stretch but he doesn’t feel like he’s imminently going to die.

He lies for a while, wrapped in this strange cocoon and stares at the roof of the car. There is no light now at all, he’s far enough off the road that he’s not too worried about getting hit by another car. Chance would be a fine thing. When he looks out of the window all he can see is wildly flurrying flakes of white, making the world look like a low resolution black and white picture. It would be beautiful if he wasn’t freezing, if he wasn’t alone.

He wants to drink more of the whiskey but remembers with a curse that he left it in the trunk. He sighs again. There’s no way he’s going out there again. It’s probably for the best anyway, not to be one of those idiots who drinks a fifth of brandy to ‘warm up’ and gets found frozen solid, face down in a field buck-ass naked. Hypothermia is weird.

He closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep but it won’t come. Behind his eyes is nothing but an endless patchwork of pictures of Cas. Eyes the colour of the sea and ink and a look of both righteous certainty and complete confusion. 

It's not new; it’s par for the course these days but the smell of the trench coat, the warmth of the fabric, makes everything more intense. Which is just what he needed. 

“Cas.” the word is out of his mouth before it even passes through his brain. The shape of it curls in the air in front of him. He watches it while he chews on his cracked bottom lip.

Each breath out clouds his vision for a moment and condenses on the rough fabric of the blanket in front of his mouth. He ignores the damp and cold against his skin while he continues, still speaking without thinking. “If you were here you could just zap me back to Sam.” He says, then adds, as an afterthought, “Guess if you were still here I wouldn’t be in this stupid situation anyway.”

He watches the snow for a bit. It's beginning to build up in tiny drifts along the edges of the cars windows. He wonders if it will cover them completely, whether tomorrow he will be enclosed in an Impala shaped igloo.

"Where are you?" He asks, "Can you still hear me? Is any of this getting through? Breaker, breaker?"

He waits for a moment, listening for the almost forgotten flap of feathers. Not unlike the sound of the trenchcoat unfurling in the wind outside. The sound doesn't come. It only comes in his memory now, punctuating the silence whenever he does this. Not that he does this often! Not that he regularly speaks to dead people. Or whatever Cas is.

"Are you dead?" He asks. He hates himself as he begins to make a deal in his mind - if he doesn't answer now that means he is dead.......the seconds drag past until he abandons that idea. 

"I miss you."

"I wish you were here."

"You have to come back man. I've got your coat."

"I love you you know." 

There is complete silence when he closes his mouth. The snow sucks all sound away, dampening it so that his voice could easily be the only one in the world. 

The physical presence of the words slowly dissipates in front of his eyes until he can pretend he never said it, that he never said it and waited for a reply that didn't come.

The only evidence is the cold where the blanket touches his lips.


End file.
